Free Shipping on all orders $35 and up.

We offer standard delivery in 3 business days or less.

Please see our shipping map below for estimated times.

Estimated standard delivery time to the U.S. and Puerto Rico

Delivery time estimates do not apply to large or heavy items that require special
shipping (including most TVs), items shipped directly from the manufacturer, or
out-of-stock items. Some items that ship from the manufacturer can only be delivered
to addresses within the 48 contiguous states.

Delivery time for standard shipping to any of the 50 U.S. states or Puerto Rico is 1-3 business days. Saturday, Sunday and national holidays are not considered business days for delivery purposes.

Video: Getting great sound from low-res music on an iPod

This article has been archived

Dave Bar has worked for Crutchfield since 1981. After a brief 23 year stint in the sales department, he now writes about home audio gear and camera equipment for Crutchfield's catalog and website. Dave has been hooked on electronics ever since putting together a 5-tube AM radio in his high school shop class, and still enjoys tinkering with stereos in his spare time. His interests include gardening, cooking, fishing, photography, and music.

Dave, a Crutchfield audio enthusiast, tests in the Crutchfield Labs whether or not he can make low-res music files from an iPod® sound great. He uses a Peachtree Decco2 amplifier/digital-to-analog converter and PSB Image T5 floor-standing speakers. For the second part of the experiment, Dave adds a Wadia 170i iPod dock. Fellow A/V writers, Ralph and Marshall, weigh-in on whether or not they hear a difference with the upgrade.

Video Transcript

Goal: Make Lo-Fi digital music sound great

Dave: We've been trying out some different ways of listening to compressed music files including headphones, desktop amplified speakers, but we thought, you know, "What if people want to listen to their music through a regular big home stereo system?" So we decided to go ahead and try and connect our iPod and our lo-fi digital files loaded onto it to a big home audio system to see if we could really hear any improvements or benefits. And we went ahead and hooked it up to the Peachtree Audio Decco2, which is a very nice integrated amp with a digital-to-analog converter built in and the Peachtree was also connected to a pair of PSB Image T5 floor-standing speakers.

Step 1: Use an amp/digital-to-analog converter

So we tried to listen to our music from the iPod two different ways with the Peachtree Audio Decco amp. The first way was to connect the headphone output jack from the iPod using just a basic cable with mini-plug on one end and RCA plugs on the other. We simply hooked that in to the auxiliary input on the Decco and listened to it straight out of the headphone jack of the iPod and frankly we were surprised that it sounded pretty good. But I think what we discovered was that pretty soon after listening that the sound was a bit throttled back, kind of constricted.

Ralph: To me it sounded a little closed in even though we had these nice speakers here. And you know the volume was there to fill the room. Still it was just hard to describe  the edges were fuzzy.

Dave: It was. It was, yeah, I thought kind of restricted sounding. You know, it sounded kind of reined in.

Step 2: Add an iPod dock

So we decided to bump it up a notch and connect one of the coolest products that we sell. It's a Wadia 170iTransport iPod dock and what it does is it takes the digital output from your iPod, bypasses the headphone amp, bypasses the DAC inside the iPod and when we connected it that way with a straight digital audio out from the iPod into the Decco the difference in sound quality was immediately noticeable.

Marshall: A lot of the fine details that I wasn't hearing before just really came out and there's a real warmth to the sound.

Ralph: It just seemed to be a more expansive sound field. You know the limitations that I was hearing with the headphone jack just kind of disappeared. I wasn't feeling like I was standing on the outside looking at this sound.

Dave: It definitely spread far, far out-wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It was clear that we were able to get a much, much better sound from our iPod even with those low-res files using the right kind of equipment.

If you have any questions about docks, integrated amps, DACs, or home speakers just give us a call.

Free tech support for the lifetime of your product

I had to call for support on the evening of installation. Your tech helped me get going in minutes. It was good to be able to call at that hour, and nice to talk to someone who knew the problem immediately.

David, Customer

We want you to enjoy the items you purchase from Crutchfield

If you're not satisfied with your purchase, you may return items that are complete and like new for any reason within 60 days